African Psychologists Push for Curriculum Overhaul to Replace Eurocentric Models
Edino Chubiyo Cornelius 
ABUJA, Nigeria – The Pan-African Psychological Association (PASU) has called for a complete shift from Euro-American frameworks in psychology education to a holistic African-centred approach that reflects the continent’s cultural realities, communal values, languages, and trauma experiences.
The call was made at the first PASU Higher Education Conference held in Abuja on Thursday in collaboration with the Nigerian Psychological Association (NPA). The conference was themed: “Psychology Education in Africa: Challenges for Cohesion and Development.”
PASU President, Prof. Andrew Zamani, said the move is critical to equipping young African psychologists to address mental health, conflict trauma, displacement, violence, peacebuilding and social healing in ways aligned with African contexts.
“Much of what we teach is based on Euro-American paradigms,” he said. “This makes it difficult to integrate psychology into Africa’s development agenda. We must produce a curriculum rooted in our cultures and realities.”
He argued that lack of psychological input contributed to many African countries’ difficulty in meeting the Millennium Development Goals and warned the same pattern may repeat with the Sustainable Development Goals without reform.
In her keynote address, Secretary-General of the International Union of Psychologists, Dr Ava Thompson, stressed the need to blend global best practices with indigenous psychological knowledge.
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